Kind to the blade, unkind to germs
Why Are Chopping Boards Made of Wood?
Wood is soft enough to spare the knife and dries in a way bacteria hate.
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Step 1 of 5
The board should be softer than the knife.
When a hard blade meets a harder surface the thin edge is what folds. A board's whole job is to give way first.
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Step 2 of 5
Cuts in wood mostly close up again.
Wood fibres are springy and pull back together after the blade passes, so the surface does not fill with permanent open grooves.
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Step 3 of 5
Wood pulls moisture away from bacteria.
Its fibres draw liquid down into the board, where bacteria are stranded away from the surface and dry out instead of multiplying.
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Step 4 of 5
Plastic is easier to clean but scars.
Plastic can go in a dishwasher, which wood cannot. But knife scars in plastic stay open, and a scarred plastic board holds more bacteria than wood does.
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Step 5 of 5
Which is why cooks keep separate boards.
The real risk is raw meat juices meeting salad. Separate boards solve that whatever the material, and no board solves it on its own.
Never soak a wooden board — water swells the fibres unevenly and splits it along the glue lines.
The short version
Wooden boards are soft enough to spare a knife edge and wick moisture away from bacteria, but separate boards matter more than material.
Try it yourself
Run a fingernail across an old plastic board and an old wooden one. The plastic grooves stay open; the wood has mostly closed.
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